Quick summary of this review: the series mostly fails to capture the tone and atmosphere of the financial industry. I quickly stopped caring about most characters (the most engaging is only in the first episode). I stopped watching after episode 4. The review will contain minor spoilers for episode 4, I will give a separate warning, when they start.
Long version: When you set a story in the financial industry, you can either just use it as a "background" to tell a story that you think is worth telling or entertaining (see for example "The International") or you try to catch the specifics, the atmosphere of that niche. This series tries to go the latter route but utterly fails to do so (I worked in that industry as a consultant for several years). To explain what I mean, let me compare this a completely different show that covers another niche and does so well: the first few seasons of Big Bang Theory. There you can tell that the creators put a lot of effort into understanding what makes those people tick. The characters may be cliches, but they are treated in a respectful manner. It makes fun of those nerds, but it manages to strike a balance that lets us laugh with Sheldon & Co, not about them. And when they talk physics glibberish, what they say actually makes sense and may even contain insider jokes. The creators really did put some effort into this.
My personal take on the industry (pun intended) is that while some negative cliches may not come out of thin air, I still pay respect to people who work 70, 80 hours per week to make the best career they can possible have. I appreciate hard work, which is also part of the financial industry. The very first episode does a decent job of showing the pressure to perform while displaying character flaws at the same time. I liked it, even when you never feel the real hecticness of a trading floor. After that, it falls flat on it's face. For the next 3 episodes, you never see anybody working again. They are just goofing around at their PCs, that's it.
Well, all that atmosphere stuff wouldn't matter too much if the show actually had an interesting story to tell, independent of the working background, but it doesn't. I found all characters (except maybe one) uninteresting, and at least in the first 4 episodes, there is little to no growth or development in those characters (which would be easy to implement given that they are rookies in their first job). Instead of interesting character, the producers preferred to include at least one sex scene per episode, carefully balanced between different sexual orientations...
What finally broke it for me was episode 4. -- Spoilers about this episode ahead!
One of our rookies (who got her job with manufactured application documents -- damn, this idea has potential!) has a "fat finger accident" and accidentally buys some financial instrument that looses a lot of money before she (or better risk management) realizes. She gets told to liquidate her position at a loss, but doubles down on it instead. That is an interesting setup and I was really curious how the situation would be resolved. In real life, security would swipe all belongings from her desk into a big plastic bag, escort her to the exit and tell her never to come back. Not kidding. Turns out this show has a different solution in mind: a different customer of our protagonist whom she first met about a week ago hears about her trouble and literally donates 200k into her trading account to offset the loss. Well, I have witnessed some "surprising" things within the industry, but a customer donating hundreds of thousands to a rookie trader she hardly knew out of pure kindness of heart is not one of them. When her boss gets to know this (any real boss would fire her immediately), he tells her something like "Oh, by the way, I also found out that your application is fake as well and that you are unqualified for your job. But don't worry. Since we are both ethnically diverse, they fear us and we must stick together". That was when I stopped watching.
Long version: When you set a story in the financial industry, you can either just use it as a "background" to tell a story that you think is worth telling or entertaining (see for example "The International") or you try to catch the specifics, the atmosphere of that niche. This series tries to go the latter route but utterly fails to do so (I worked in that industry as a consultant for several years). To explain what I mean, let me compare this a completely different show that covers another niche and does so well: the first few seasons of Big Bang Theory. There you can tell that the creators put a lot of effort into understanding what makes those people tick. The characters may be cliches, but they are treated in a respectful manner. It makes fun of those nerds, but it manages to strike a balance that lets us laugh with Sheldon & Co, not about them. And when they talk physics glibberish, what they say actually makes sense and may even contain insider jokes. The creators really did put some effort into this.
My personal take on the industry (pun intended) is that while some negative cliches may not come out of thin air, I still pay respect to people who work 70, 80 hours per week to make the best career they can possible have. I appreciate hard work, which is also part of the financial industry. The very first episode does a decent job of showing the pressure to perform while displaying character flaws at the same time. I liked it, even when you never feel the real hecticness of a trading floor. After that, it falls flat on it's face. For the next 3 episodes, you never see anybody working again. They are just goofing around at their PCs, that's it.
Well, all that atmosphere stuff wouldn't matter too much if the show actually had an interesting story to tell, independent of the working background, but it doesn't. I found all characters (except maybe one) uninteresting, and at least in the first 4 episodes, there is little to no growth or development in those characters (which would be easy to implement given that they are rookies in their first job). Instead of interesting character, the producers preferred to include at least one sex scene per episode, carefully balanced between different sexual orientations...
What finally broke it for me was episode 4. -- Spoilers about this episode ahead!
One of our rookies (who got her job with manufactured application documents -- damn, this idea has potential!) has a "fat finger accident" and accidentally buys some financial instrument that looses a lot of money before she (or better risk management) realizes. She gets told to liquidate her position at a loss, but doubles down on it instead. That is an interesting setup and I was really curious how the situation would be resolved. In real life, security would swipe all belongings from her desk into a big plastic bag, escort her to the exit and tell her never to come back. Not kidding. Turns out this show has a different solution in mind: a different customer of our protagonist whom she first met about a week ago hears about her trouble and literally donates 200k into her trading account to offset the loss. Well, I have witnessed some "surprising" things within the industry, but a customer donating hundreds of thousands to a rookie trader she hardly knew out of pure kindness of heart is not one of them. When her boss gets to know this (any real boss would fire her immediately), he tells her something like "Oh, by the way, I also found out that your application is fake as well and that you are unqualified for your job. But don't worry. Since we are both ethnically diverse, they fear us and we must stick together". That was when I stopped watching.